Cold Heart

Chapter 2

Lorraine arrived at the Nathans’ mansion with her CD playing Maria Callas singing Madame Butterfly at full volume. The door was opened by a middle-aged Mexican maid who ushered her into the cool hallway and motioned her through an archway framed by a broad-leafed twining vine growing around two carved pine pillars. Looking up the floating stairs, Lorraine saw several modern art works. Whether they were valuable or not, she couldn’t tell.

Through the archway was a shallow flight of pink polished granite steps leading down to the main living area of the house. Floor to ceiling windows gave it a lovely, light, delicate feel, and the room had been divided into a sitting space on one side and an area for formal dining on the other. There were large plain white armchairs and sofas, and one piece of ‘art’ furniture, a strange green and black chair with a round, stuffed base and padded back, which looked to Lorraine like a cartoon-style tea-cup or a fairground waltzer.

Cindy Nathan sat in the tea-cup, curled up like a child with a glass of orange juice cupped in her hands, rolling a clear plastic beach ball back and forth over the same six inches of floor with a tiny, tanned foot, drying the varnish on her toenails. ‘Oh, hi, have you come to give me a massage?’ she said brightly, getting up. Today she had her hair in Dutch-girl braids, high on her head, and had made up her eyes in a defiantly garish blue, her lips with raspberry frosting. She wore a yellow top with peasant-style embroidery and blue and yellow windowpane check pants.

Cindy’s acting — as she pretended Lorraine was a masseuse — was as bad as it had been in her TV roles. She gestured for Lorraine to follow her into an adjoining room. It was a gym, very professional with weights, sit-up bars, medicine balls and leg stretchers. Close to a boxing punch-bag, in the centre of the space, was a row of different-sized gloves in bright red leather. ‘I always used to call this Harry’s toy cupboard. He was always in here when he was home, working out.’

‘He must have been fit.’

‘Yes, he was. Well, so he should have been. He spent enough time looking after his body.’ She giggled, and covered her mouth. ‘I reckon the reason he was so obsessive was...’ she held up her little finger and waggled it ‘...he was kind of small. Some parts of the body you can never build up.’

Lorraine perched on one of the black leather-covered benches, irritated by the girl’s innuendo. ‘Did you kill him, Cindy?’ she asked.

‘No, I did not. I did not.’

Lorraine smiled encouragingly at her. ‘Good. Now, can we talk in here or not?’

‘Yes, it’s safe.’

‘Safe?’

‘Ah... yes. Harry used to record stuff,’ Cindy said, colouring slightly, and Lorraine had the impression that the girl had said something she hadn’t meant to. ‘But down here was his private place. Nobody came down here but him,’ she chattered on. ‘I used to have to go out to my classes — he wouldn’t let me work out down here.’

‘What kind of thing did Harry record?’ Lorraine asked.

‘Oh... just conversations. He taped phone calls, and there were cameras in all the rooms in the house. For security, you know, the art.’

‘You knew about that, though.’

‘Oh, yes, I knew.’

Again Lorraine felt that Cindy wasn’t telling the full truth, and she wondered whether the presence of a pornographer, an ex-actress and a large number of cameras under the same roof had had the inevitable consequence. ‘He didn’t make any other sort of recordings?’

‘No,’ Cindy said, a shade too quickly. ‘He was just paranoid, even about personal things. I mean, he hated anyone to know he’d had a face-lift, and he dyed his hair — plus he took his drugs down here.’ It was a titbit thrown out to shift the conversation away from a subject Cindy clearly didn’t want to discuss.

Lorraine asked, ‘What drugs did he use?’

‘Oh, stuff for body-building mostly. Sometimes he’d have a few lines of cocaine, but mostly it was steroids, or speed — he was a real speed freak. But he was careful. He’d never over-indulge — he always knew exactly what he was taking.’

‘Did you take drugs?’

‘Me?’ Cindy gave a goofy grin, suddenly the little girl again, as if it were all a game. ‘Oh, yeah, I’d do anything that was going, mostly cocaine. But I haven’t touched anything since I knew about the baby. I’ve got to take care of myself. You have to when you’re pregnant.’

Cindy gazed at her reflection in the mirrors, and Lorraine considered how to question her. She would like access to the tape recordings Cindy had mentioned. ‘Can I just take you through the events up to your arrest?’ she said.

‘Sure. Do you want a drink?’

The girl’s butterfly mind digressed into trivia — either she didn’t realize the seriousness of her situation, or she was trying to hold on to some kind of normality. She wandered off to a small kitchen area, tucked away at one side of the gym by the showers.

‘Just water for me,’ Lorraine said, following her.

Cindy opened the fridge and selected a can of Diet Coke for herself. She opened a cupboard and took out a glass. Having forgotten, it seemed, Lorraine’s water, she opened the can and poured out the contents.

‘Where exactly were you on that morning?’ Lorraine asked, sitting down on a work bench and taking out her notepad.

‘I was lying on the balcony, over there.’ Cindy waved her hand. ‘I fell asleep.’

‘Would that be at the front of the house?’ Lorraine asked.

‘Sort of. There’s balconies all over the house, but I kind of move around with the sun, you know, so I was on that one.’ She pointed to indicate which side of the house she meant.

‘And the swimming pool is where exactly?’

‘Behind you,’ Cindy said.

‘Is there access from here to the pool?’

‘Of course. Behind the mirrors, they slide back.’

‘Right. So what time were you sunbathing?’

‘Oh, the usual time.’ She took a slug of her Coke, draining the glass.

‘Yes, but I don’t know your usual routine, so if you would just take me through it.’ Lorraine tried not to sound irritated.

‘Okay. I get up usually about nine, sometimes earlier, sometimes a lot later, shower, then work on my tan for a couple of hours — just my body, I don’t do my face.’

‘Do the servants all know your routine?’

‘Of course, I’ve been doing it since I got married — get up, shower, sunbathe, swim, get dressed for lunch.’

Cindy started doing half-hearted t’ai chi exercises in front of the mirror.

‘So on the day you discovered your husband’s body, you were sunbathing as usual and you fell asleep. A loud noise woke you — about what time would that have been?’

Cindy wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe eleven. I was asleep the first time, then I heard it again. At first I thought it was a car backfiring. It was just one loud bang. Then I saw all these birds flying up, from the garden by the shrubbery. You can’t see the pool from the balcony, just the edge of the garden, so I called Harry, wondering if he was messing about.’

‘Messing about?’

‘Yeah. Sometimes he’d take pot-shots at the birds. It used to make me mad as hell, because once he killed one.’

Lorraine doodled on her pad as Cindy went into a long monologue on how she loved all of nature’s creatures. Finally she interrupted, ‘You know, Cindy, if you’re found guilty of murdering your husband, you’ll be locked up in a prison and you’ll be hard pushed to hear a single tweet. Now I know it may be tedious, but I have to ask all these questions so I know exactly what I should—’

‘I never killed him,’ the girl said, red-faced with anger.

‘I know you didn’t, but you’re to stand trial for it, unless—’

‘I never killed him. I found him, that’s all.’

‘So, will you close your eyes and tell me exactly what you did, from the time the noise woke you to the moment you discovered your husband’s body?’

Cindy covered her eyes with her hands. ‘You mean, like creatively visualize?’ Clearly this was something she was familiar with.

‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘After the bang, I called out his name,’ Cindy began. ‘When I got no reply, I picked up my towel, and my sun creams and my straw hat. I went into the bedroom and decided I’d have a swim. I didn’t have anything on — I sunbathe naked — so I put my swimsuit on and got a big outdoor towel. Then I heard another bang — I was pretty sure it was a gun this time, so I put on my mules and went downstairs...’ She withdrew her hands from her face, and her big blue eyes stared ahead. ‘I went to the pool and put my towel on the chair by the table. I saw Harry’s towel, his sandals, and his cigarette packet. I looked around because one cigarette was smoked down — there was a long line of ash on it.’

Cindy blinked, and Lorraine noticed that she was looking at herself in the mirrors again as she spoke.

‘I was about to dive in so I went to the deep end. First thing I noticed was the water was kind of pink, and then I saw him. I called out his name — he was lying face down, arms outstretched — but I knew something bad had happened, and I started to scream. I screamed and screamed.’

‘How long was it before someone came out to you?’

Cindy stared at herself and Lorraine had to repeat the question.

‘I don’t know, it seemed a very long time. Then Juana came out, with Jose just behind her, and she said to me, she said...’

For the first time since they had come into the gym Lorraine saw some emotion. ‘She said to me, “Holy Mother, Mrs Nathan, what have you done?”’

Lorraine waited, watching Cindy closely. The girl’s breathing had become irregular, and she was swallowing rapidly. ‘Go on, Cindy. Then what happened?’

‘Jose jumped into the pool, and he said, “She’s shot him! She’s shot him!’” She gulped air into her lungs, her chest heaving. ‘They dragged him to the shallow end. I could see white bone... and they couldn’t lift him out.’ She shuddered.

Lorraine tapped her notebook. ‘Go on.’

‘They called the police, I guess.’

Lorraine looked up. ‘But Cindy, you told me you called the police.’

Cindy blinked. ‘Oh, yes, that’s right. I did.’

Lorraine made a note that the call to her office had come in at just after eleven o’clock. If Cindy couldn’t recall contacting the police, maybe she couldn’t remember calling Lorraine either.

Cindy continued, ‘I called Mr Feinstein, because the next thing the garden was full of people and someone brought me some brandy. I was still by the pool, but sitting on one of the wooden chairs, and all I could think of was that he’d been sitting where I was sitting, smoking that cigarette. Then Mr Feinstein said to me, “Cindy, they want to take you into the station to ask you some questions,” and that it would be best if I got dressed.’ Cindy began to twist a strand of her blonde hair through her fingers. ‘I got dressed, I got my purse and my sunglasses, just like I was going out shopping or something, but I didn’t put any make-up on, and then they took me to the station.’

‘Do you recall the name of the officer who questioned you?’

‘No.’

‘Did Mr Feinstein come with you?’

‘No, he came on later.’

‘So you had no lawyer with you?’

‘No, I was on my own.’

Lorraine jotted some notes, then looked up sharply as Cindy began to cry. ‘They said they found my gun, they said I did it, but I kept on saying over and over that I couldn’t have done it, that I wouldn’t have done something that bad even if I said I would.’

Lorraine repeated, ‘“Said I would”?’

‘Well, I told you, I was always threatening him.’ Cindy’s voice steadied a little, and her chin lifted. ‘I was always saying I’d kill him, because he used to get me so mad. He could be so mean to me, I’d get mad as hell. I’d scream and shout and try to hit him, but he would just laugh, and that got me even madder, but I never meant what I said. It was just I was upset.’ She dissolved into real tears again — more at the memory of her anger and humiliation, Lorraine thought, than out of grief at her husband’s death.

‘I need a tissue,’ Cindy said, sniffing, her dark blue mascara beginning to run.

Lorraine crossed to the shower area and headed for one of the toilets to get some tissue. She dragged off a length of paper and hurried back to the gym.

‘I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t kill him, even though he got me madder than hell!’ Cindy mopped her face, then blew her nose. ‘I didn’t kill him, did I? Please tell me I didn’t do it.’

Lorraine bent down to her, in an almost motherly fashion. ‘But you didn’t do it, did you?’

Cindy wiped her face and blew her nose again, her voice a hoarse whisper. ‘I don’t know. You see, it’s all blurred. I mean, I’d know, wouldn’t I? I’d know if I hud done it. That’s what you got to help me with, because I’m all confused.’

Lorraine straightened up. One moment Cindy had given her a detailed description of what she had done leading up to the discovery of the body, the next she was asking if she could have been the one to pull the trigger. It didn’t make sense.

‘You’ve just told me how you found the body, Cindy, so why are you thinking now you might have killed him? ‘

Cindy rocked forward, head in her hands. ‘‘Cos I can only remember going to the pool and seeing him in the water. Nothing before that. I do the same thing every day — I mean, I could be just filling in the gaps.’

‘But you said you heard the gunshot?’

‘Yes, I know. I know I said that.’

‘Are you telling me now that you didn’t hear it?’

‘Yes. No, I heard it, I’m not lying to you. I heard that one, but...’

‘But what?’

Cindy twisted the damp tissue in her fingers. ‘Maybe it didn’t happen when I think it happened.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What if I’d done it before?’

‘You’ll have to help me, Cindy, I can’t follow what you’re saying. How do you mean before?’

‘Earlier.’

Lorraine sighed. ‘You mean before you went to the balcony to sunbathe?’

‘No. I mean the first shot. When I was sleeping. I mean, I could have done it half asleep. Like in an altered state of consciousness — you know, the way people remember past lives, and sometimes they just act them out? I mean, I could have been a murderess or anything. Maybe I just couldn’t help myself.’

Lorraine rolled her eyes as Cindy sprang to her feet, thinking that her client had been watching too many of her husband’s killer-bimbo fantasies. She watched the girl dive at the punch-bag and hit it, her face a mask of anger. Lorraine let her go until she tired herself out and eventually put her arms around the punch-bag, hugging it tightly.

‘Sometimes he didn’t come home,’ she said softly. Lorraine kept silent. ‘Often he stayed out all night, and I knew about the other women. I knew he was never faithful, he always said that to me, said he could never be faithful to one woman and that I’d just have to accept that. The day before I found him, he’d been really mean to me. We argued at breakfast, and then he came down here. I came after him and he was furious, but I wouldn’t go. I said to him that if he carried on this way I’d leave him, and he said he didn’t care what I did and he laughed at me, kept on punching this thing, laughing and ignoring me. So I went and got the gun, and when I came back he was on that weight machine, and I went right up to him and I pointed it at his head, and I said that was the last time he was ever going to laugh at me.’

Lorraine still said nothing, but was interested to note that Cindy was calm now, her mind focused on what she was saying.

‘He looked at me, then he reached out and pulled the gun over so it was almost in his mouth and he told me to fire it.’

‘And?’

Cindy sighed. ‘I did. I pulled the trigger, but it wasn’t loaded.’ She pushed away the punch-bag, which began to swing slowly. ‘He got up from the bench and hit me in the stomach. I fell backwards onto the floor and he kept on coming towards me, but he stepped right over me and walked into the showers. I screamed at him that I would get him the next time. Next time the gun would be loaded.’ She rubbed her belly. ‘Punched me right in the baby, and it hurt so bad I was sick, but he made me get dressed and go out for dinner at Morton’s, and he told everyone what I’d done, and they all laughed. He kept on fooling around at dinner with this baby zucchini as the gun, shoving it into his mouth, and everyone laughed, and I got so upset I was crying, but I wasn’t going to stay and be made a fool of. So I got up and I shouted it out. I said the next time he wouldn’t live to tell anybody anything because the next time I’d make sure I killed him.’

Cindy went to fetch another Diet Coke. This time she drank it from the can. ‘He didn’t come home. I waited and waited, and it was six o’clock in the morning when he came back. He was in his dressing room, taking his clothes off, when I went in to see him. He just told me to get out, but I wouldn’t. I said he shouldn’t make a fool of me in front of people like he had done, but he just kept on choosing which shirt he was going to wear, ignoring me again.’

Lorraine waited while Cindy sipped the Coke.

‘I went into the bedroom to get the gun. I meant it, I was going to kill him, and I’d just figured out how to load it, but I couldn’t remember where it was, or if I’d taken it from the gym. I was looking all over the room for it when he strolled in all dressed up and Jose knocked on the door.’ Cindy frowned as she tried to recall the details.

‘Jose said that the car needed to be serviced, and did Harry need it after his breakfast meeting at seven. Harry said he didn’t. He’d had a long, hard night and he’d just sit by the pool reading scripts after his meeting. Then... he started laughing and he told Jose that I’d threatened to kill him again and that Jose was his witness that I was a real flake, a psychiatric case. He knows how upset I get about him saying things like that because I’ve had, you know, some problems.’

Lorraine shifted her weight. ‘Problems?’ she said gently.

‘Mmmm, I have these... kind of bad days, you know. I get depressed, uptight about things, angry.’

‘Can you go back to what you were saying about when your husband and Jose were talking in the bedroom? What happened then?’

‘Oh, yeah. Well, Harry left. And I went back to bed. I’d had such a bad night I told Juana not to disturb me. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and went out on the balcony to lie in the sun, and I guess I must have gone to sleep there. I had a nightmare, me shooting Harry, like I’d threatened to do, and something woke me up — well, I think it was me woke myself up because I pulled the trigger. I fired the gun. But I’m sure it was in my dream and then I’m not sure. That’s what terrifies me. Did I do it or was I dreaming?’

‘How long do you think there was between the two shots, or the one shot and what might have been a car backfiring?’

‘Er... maybe ten minutes.’

‘About how long does it take to get from the balcony to the pool, Cindy?’

Cindy drew open the sliding door. ‘Oh, four, maybe five minutes, but it would depend on how fast you were moving.’

Lorraine picked up her purse and followed Cindy out. ‘Do you think you’re going to be all right here alone?’

‘If I’m not there’s Jose and Juana, but they don’t like me.’

‘When you said I had to pretend to be a masseuse you seemed worried someone would find out that I was investigating the case.’

‘I am. I don’t want Jose or that bitch Juana to know. I don’t want anyone knowing my business because they all believe I killed Harry, and so they won’t say nice things about me in the court. But if they saw this, maybe they would change their minds.’ Cindy pulled up her top. There was a nightmare bruise across her belly, a virtual imprint of a fist. ‘This is nothin’. He was always knocking me around, just not my face.’

‘Does anyone know he did this to you?’

‘Maybe his ex-wives or his girlfriends — my mother always used to say once a wife-beater always one — but they won’t lift a finger for me, will they? Nor will my mother come to think of it.’ Lorraine lit a cigarette. She asked Cindy for the names of the people who had been at the dinner the night before Nathan was killed, the addresses and names of girlfriends and ex-wives, business associates, anyone who would benefit from his death, anyone who had a grudge against him. Eventually she said, ‘Let’s leave it there for the present, Cindy,’ and got up to go. ‘I’ll start checking some of this stuff out.’

‘Sure.’ Cindy shrugged. ‘But I’ll see you tomorrow anyway, won’t I?’

‘What?’ Lorraine was surprised.

‘Harry’s funeral. The coroner’s office released the body last night. I just called Forest Lawn and told them to take care of everything — they said they’d put a notice in the papers and all that stuff. I’d kind of like it if you came. I mean, my folks aren’t going to be there, and I never liked his that much.’

‘I’d be glad to,’ Lorraine said, thinking that a chance to get a closer look at Harry Nathan’s friends and relatives would be welcome. ‘What time?’

‘Eleven,’ Cindy said. ‘It’s in that fake New England church they have there. Match all his phoney friends.’ She gave a wry smile, but Lorraine saw the flicker of pain in her eyes. She could see too that having become Mrs Nathan III at the age of nineteen hadn’t landed this isolated, mixed-up girl in any bed of roses.

‘Okay,’ Lorraine said. ‘Just one last thing. Can I have access to some of these recordings Harry made?’

Once again it was clear that Cindy was uncomfortable, but she said, ‘Oh, sure. I’ll have Jose send them over.’

‘Couldn’t I have them now?’

‘It might take a while to find them. He kept them in weird places.’

She was evidently preparing the ground for some of the tapes to become conveniently untraceable, Lorraine noted. ‘Didn’t the police ask for them?’ she asked.

‘Well, I didn’t tell them about them. I figured, I pay my taxes, let them do their job!’ Cindy said with another touch of defiance. But then the fight went out of her. ‘Besides, they’re so fucking sure it’s me that they aren’t going to bother listening to ten million hours of Harry talking about all the ginseng he stuck up his ass.’

‘I see,’ Lorraine said evenly. ‘Well, I’d be interested to hear about it, if you could send over any tapes you have. See you tomorrow.’

By the time Lorraine returned to the office, she felt drained and Decker looked at her with his head on one side. ‘Go well, did it?’

Lorraine tossed her purse down. ‘You try interviewing Cindy Nathan. The porch light’s on, but there’s nobody home. She’s not sure that she didn’t do it, because she dreamed that she’d just pulled the trigger when she heard a gunshot, or as she told me repeatedly, it might have been a car backfiring!’

‘What’s your gut feeling?’

Lorraine leaned back in her chair. ‘I don’t think she did it, but I’d better find something fast to prove that she didn’t because, pushed by any decent prosecutor, she’ll admit that she did. She’s that dumb.’

‘Why would someone like Harry Nathan marry such a flake?’

Lorraine sipped her coffee. ‘Because she’s twenty and he was a fifty-year-old guy dyeing his hair and having face-lifts, and she’s got a body like a fourteen-year-old Venus, and an angel’s face. He also had quite a line-up of women as well as Cindy, plus remained friendly with his ex-wife, who still, by the way, runs his art gallery. I’d say Cindy was the classic babe armpiece for a man with a small dick.’

‘Oh, he had one of those, did he?’ Decker said, camp.

‘According to Little Miss Bimbo he did, but she’s having his baby. Not that he seemed all that interested — almost punched it through her backbone. I saw the bruise.’

‘So,’ Decker said, leaning on the doorframe, ‘what’s the next move?’

‘I think she’s hiding something about tapes Nathan made at the house — phone conversations, security videos. She didn’t tell the police and she kind of let it slip to me, but she said she’d send the tapes over. We’ll just have to wait and see what we get.’

Cindy Nathan brought the boxes upstairs from the gym herself and stacked them in the hall. She had listened to some of the conversations again and again, just to hear his voice, but they had agreed a code and stuck to it and there was nothing to make Harry or anyone else suspicious: even the police could have listened to them, if they’d found them. She dialled a cab company, said she wanted some items delivered, and sat down to wait for the driver to come. It would have been easier, of course, to send Jose, but she was sick of Harry’s housekeepers knowing all her comings and goings, the pair of them always watching her. They had been surprised when she had given them the rest of the day off, but within half an hour they had been on their way to Juana’s sister.

When the cab driver showed up, Cindy gave him the boxes of tapes with Lorraine’s address and twenty-five dollars. Good riddance, she thought. Mrs Page was welcome to listen to all the rambling rubbish Harry recorded. There was nothing to find.

The videos, though, they were something else — but where the fuck were they? Harry had kept all the recordings together in the safe under the floor in his dressing room but the videotapes, both the ones from the security cameras and the... the other ones, were gone. Cindy tried to tell herself that if she couldn’t find them, nobody else was likely to, but the possibility that they might be circulating somewhere out there tormented her.

It was more likely that the tapes had never left the house, she told herself. Harry had just moved them again, the mistrustful, suspicious-minded bastard. She set off for the stairs to have another look in the gym, where there was certainly no visible hiding place for the substantial stack of videos. She deduced he must have had a new cavity let into the floor or the wall.

The noise of Cindy’s tapping on what she considered various likely spots on the walls masked the sound of the doors opening to the pool area. At first she didn’t notice the man’s presence, and for over a minute he watched her in silence before he spoke.

‘Cindy,’ he said, his voice curiously cold and flat.

She froze.

‘Cindy,’ he said again.

‘Jesus, Raymond, you gave me such a fucking scare! Don’t ever do that to me again! How did you get in here?’

In front of her was a tall man with thinning silver-grey hair, and an extraordinarily handsome face. When he began to speak, it became clear that behind the distinguished façade was a vapid, unstable personality. There was only one thing Raymond Vallance could ever have been, and that is what he was: an actor.

‘Through the pool doors. I still have the key to this fairy bower, Rapunzel, remember?’ He had the mannered and over-emphasized diction of the lifelong performer, and shook the key at Cindy before he put it back in his pocket.

‘Well, long time, no see,’ Cindy said, trying to ignore his apparent froideur and assuming a coquettish air as she moved across to him. She made to slide her arms round his waist, but Vallance stepped away immediately. Close to, she could see that he was grey in the face, haggard, as though he hadn’t slept in days, and his clothes were creased and dirty. Not that that was necessarily anything new with Raymond, she thought, but he was clearly in no mood for fun and games.

‘Cindy,’ he said, ‘we have to be very careful now, you know that.’

‘For Chrissakes, Raymond. Harry’s being pickled in brine at Forest Lawn right this minute!’ Cindy cried. ‘We don’t have to hide anything.’

‘Don’t talk that way about him, you tacky little piece of trash,’ Vallance snapped, and Cindy recoiled from the cold anger in his voice. For a moment she had the impression that he was genuinely in the grip of strong emotion, almost as though he were fighting back tears — but if Raymond was so crazy about Harry, what had he been doing fucking the ass off Harry’s wife every time his back was turned:

‘Raymond, I haven’t seen you in weeks. I’m, like, totally strung out and I’m pregnant, Raymond. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’ she began, her voice trembling.

‘Not particularly,’ Vallance said, in the same odd, cold tone she had never heard from him before. ‘Other people’s children have never interested me much.’

‘Raymond—’ Cindy wailed.

Vallance cut her short. ‘I came here to ask you only two things, Cindy,’ he said. ‘First, what happened to the tapes?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, her eyes sliding away from his.

‘Did the police take them?’

‘I can’t find them — I mean the videos. They were in the safe and now they’re gone. I took the tapes from the phone out and—’

He interrupted her again. ‘And where are they?’

Cindy squirmed. ‘I... put ’em somewhere safe.’

‘Cindy,’ Vallance said, grabbing the girl by her upper arms, ‘tell me where the fucking tapes are right now or I’ll break your arm.’ He shook her hard, and she saw a darkness in his eyes she had not seen before. It chilled her to the bone.

‘I... I hired a PI to, like, look after us,’ Cindy stammered, beginning to cry. ‘I gave them to her. I had to, Raymond, it would’ve looked worse if I hadn’t, and I checked ’em all.’

Vallance thrust her violently away from him. She stumbled in the high, unwieldy shoes and fell backwards onto the floor. ‘You sent those tapes to a private investigator?’ he said, now white with rage. ‘Tell me her name.’

‘Page,’ Cindy sobbed. ‘Lorraine Page. On... West Pico.’

‘Well, I’ll take care of that,’ he said. He stood looking at the girl’s huddled body on the floor, listening to her cry. He turned to go, but then bent down beside her.

‘Cindy?’ His voice was oddly gentle. ‘Just one last thing I need to know, Cindy.’ She lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing the blue eye-shadow in streaks across her face.

‘You killed Harry, didn’t you, Cindy?’

She sensed danger immediately and tried to roll away from him, but in one movement Vallance caught her by the hip, turned her onto her back and sat astride her. ‘Did you kill him, Cindy?’ he asked, as though they were exchanging pleasantries at a party.

‘Raymond,’ she wept, almost hysterical, ‘you’re hurting me! You’ll hurt the baby!’

‘Answer me, Cindy,’ Vallance demanded, and banged her head hard on the floor. ‘Did you kill him or not?’

‘I didn’t! I swear it! I swear it on my kid’s life, Raymond — it’s Harry’s kid.’ She did not know what prompted her to add the last words, but she felt the high tension in Vallance’s body slacken.

‘Well,’ he said, releasing her and giving her a look almost of disgust, ‘maybe it is.’

He rocked back onto his heels with a peculiarly graceful movement, and got to his feet, looking down at her as dispassionately as though she were a drunk he had to step over in the street. ‘See you at Forest Lawn,’ he said, and was gone.

Decker’s phone rang. It was the doorman: there had been a delivery, in three cardboard boxes. He’d bring them up.

The boxes were stiff-sided packing cases, thickly Sellotaped across the opening flaps, and numbered one to three. Decker and Lorraine ripped open case one.

‘Harry Nathan’s private recordings of phone calls and anyone who called at the house,’ Lorraine said.

‘Dear God, this’ll take weeks to plough through.’ Decker looked over the rows and rows of tapes, marked with dates.

Lorraine pointed to case three. ‘Start with the most recent and work backwards. See you tomorrow after I’ve held Cindy’s hand at Forest Lawn.’ She bent down and clipped on Tiger’s lead. The big dog immediately began to drag her towards the door.

Decker checked his watch — almost six fifteen. He packed twenty of the tapes for the last three months into his car tape case, stuck it in his gym bag and decided that he would start playing them as he drove home.

Raymond Vallance sat in the downstairs lobby of Lorraine’s building and observed Decker carefully through the iridescent blue lenses of his last season’s Calvin Klein sunglasses. He had been just in time to see three packing cases go in, and one lady, a big dog and now quite a cute little fag come out. No boxes.

He gave the doorman a pleasant smile, folded his newspaper and walked out onto the street. He leaned back against the wall, as Decker went to the entrance to the motor court, and took a slim leather address book from an inside pocket.

No numbers were ever deleted from Raymond Vallance’s little black book: you never knew when you might want to look up an old friend, perhaps for a favour or, even better, suggest something that might be mutually beneficial. Not that this party was a friend exactly, but he had been useful to both Harry and himself on a number of occasions in the past with respect to little matters of entertainment — company or chemicals. But this was more serious. He dialled the number and the young man picked up almost at once.

‘Yo, bro,’ Vallance began in the slangy sing-song voice and Brooklyn accent he adopted when talking to black people. ‘You busy tonight? Got a little job for you...’